Cairns’s lawyer denies asking teammate to lie

THE LAWYER for former New Zealand captain Chris Cairns (pix) yesterday denied asking his client’s former teammate Lou Vincent to lie for him in court.

Cairns, 45, is accused of having lied during a libel trial in March 2012 that saw him win £1.4million (RM9.24m) in damages from Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi, who had accused him of match-fixing.

Cairns’s co-defendant, barrister Andrew Fitch-Holland, is alleged to have approached Vincent for a false witness statement in support of Cairns during a Skype conversation.

But Fitch-Holland told London’s Southwark Crown Court: “I wasn’t asking Mr Vincent to make a false statement at all.”

Vincent had previously told the court that Cairns had promised to pay him money if he deliberately played badly while they were playing for the Chandigarh Lions in the Indian Cricket League in 2008.

Fitch-Holland was asked by prosecutor Sasha Wass QC about the Skype conversation that he had with Vincent, which the cricketer secretly recorded.

“You knew Mr Vincent was part of Chris Cairns’s match-fixing posse,” Wass said. “No, that’s not right,” Fitch-Holland replied.

Fitch-Holland angrily denied that he and Vincent had agreed that Modi’s accusations against Cairns, made on Twitter in January 2010, were true.

He described Vincent as a “self-confessed liar and a cheat”, adding: “I hope I would be believed over him.” He also insisted that he knew nothing about Cairns’s alleged matchfixing.

Cairns is accused of perjury and perverting the course of justice, while Fitch-Holland is alleged to have sought a false statement to support him in his 2012 libel case. Both men deny the charges against them. – AFP